Olivia Wilde is a category breaker.While many Hollywood stars are preoccupied with Instagraming their monogrammed Vuittons and making the red carpet rounds, the 29-year-old actress is instead focusing her energies on the idea of contribution. Wilde just co-launched a web portal called Conscious Commerce that ties philanthropy into consumerism—think buying a cool pair of kicks or an elegant candle that directly aids children living in poverty or supports a fair trade cooperative using sustainable production methods.Now having decided it’s time to “stop making bad movies,” which Wilde jokes has significantly freed up her spare time, it’s a way of life that she explains is her attempt at “being a useful human.”YouBeauty caught up with the actress-activist in New York City, where Revlon just announced Wilde will join Halle Berry as the face of the brand’s new Age-Defying Collection of foundation and CC cream formulated with lifting and firming benefits. Having recently penned a fiery diatribe for Glamour on the negative social perception women contend with after turning 30, we asked for her thoughts on becoming the ambassador for an age-defying line.“If we see it as staving off this inevitable tidal wave of doom, it will be an endless fear—something we’re fighting against. I think it’s something you embrace, something you see as an opportunity to practice self-care,” says Wilde, who adds that a chat with Berry while shooting the new campaign left her feeling inspired about getting older in Tinsel Town.“Halle’s adamantly against plastic surgery. She says it’s about taking care of yourself. It’s so inspiring to see someone who has embraced getting older, and who has done it so gracefully. People are afraid of turning 30—it’s absurd. It’s really the good part of life. Now you know yourself, you know things and can finally enjoy life more. That’s why I call it the ‘cut the bullshit and go be awesome’ stage.”Sporting a baby bump—it’s her first with fiancé and fellow actor Jason Sudeikis—Wilde says that pregnancy has transformed her attitude on a lot of things, including how she cares for herself. “It’s kind of the only time in our lives when we’re conscious in a very thoughtful way, almost because it’s not for us. We’re thinking about a little person, so we’re kinder to ourselves and we think: What am I putting on my skin, what am I eating, how am I working out?”With her passion now dedicated to Conscious Commerce, Wilde emphasizes that you don’t have to cut out materialistic delights in order to lead a mindful life. She launched the project with best friend Barbara Burchfield, who founded Global Citizen Festival—music concerts that gather people to take actionable steps to help fight poverty. But don’t expect a forced hemp-and-granola agenda on Conscious Commerce. “We select purposeful products that we think you’d buy anyway—this is not your source for recycled gum tampons—and organize them for your perusing pleasure,” writes the duo on the website.
 |
“With Conscious Commerce, we’re basically trying to prove that you can live and use all of the creature comforts of the modern world without contributing to its decline,” Wilde tells us. “We’re a marketplace that celebrates companies that use local manufacturing or sustainable and fair trade products, and we also act as an agency that pairs brands with no philanthropic partners with non-profits that we vet,” she adds.Take, for example, a recent success: the best-selling Anthropologie dress Wilde collaborated on with brand designer Yoana Baraschi that sold out to the public, and directly benefitted a school in Calcutta, India, for young women who are in danger of entering the commercial sex trade. The site works with a plethora of locally run small organizations that focus on causes ranging from education and healthcare to microfinance and animal cruelty prevention.We applaud the very cool way that Wilde is using her celebrity for good, and it’s little surprise after you learn that her parents, uncles and grandfather have all been highly esteemed journalists. (In fact, mom is Leslie Cockburn, who has produced several prominent pieces for “60 Minutes.”) However, we weren’t about to let Wilde get away without divulging some of her best beauty and fitness tips.When preparing for roles like Quorra in the Tron flicks, Wilde amps up rotation of her favorite workout methods: toning with light weights, pilates, yoga and spinning. Though above all, she emphasizes finding a practice that motivates you personally. “We think of exercise as this obligatory torture that we have to do because it’ll keep us alive and make us fit into things, but I’ve recently shifted to thinking it’s actually this treat for yourself, this time you have alone that’s usually the only hours in the day we spend thinking about ourselves,” says Wilde.Beauty-wise, Wilde keeps it super streamlined for a silver screen star who has access to virtually anything; she simply cleanses and moisturizes daily, and exfoliates weekly. She relies on the quick precision of eyeliner and eyebrow pencils for definition, and she dampens a Beauty Blender sponge to blend foundation for the dewy skin finish she’s known for on the red carpet. For regular days, Wilde is a fan of the sheerer coverage and speedy application of Revlon Age-Defying CC Cream with SPF 30.Puffy eyes are her ongoing dilemma, though she nips them with cold teabag compresses. Of her naturally bushy brows, she bemoans, “I fell right into the trap of the early 90s, trying desperately to look like Kate Moss—my whole family has really great, thick, Lauren Bacall-like eyebrows, and I took them all down to nothing and now have to use pencil to fill them in!”She credits celebrity makeup artist Gucci Westman with teaching her a most prized insider tip: using Revlon ColorStay Eyeliner pencil in Brown to create a few freckles on and around the nose to “add dimension” to her complexion. And while we often look to celebs for makeup ideas, Wilde says she’s most influenced when others toe lines outside the beauty box. For example, last year’s punk-themed Met Ball got her creative juices flowing. “Emily Blunt had this really cool orange eye that I thought was really awesome. People were using colors they wouldn’t typically use—it was super inspiring!”In response to all the press published on her flawless skin, she says, “Look, no one has a perfect complexion. Makeup certainly helps, though it doesn’t mean slathering on foundation, but learning how to use concealer properly and getting your perfect color match,” she advises.Wilde credits vitamin-rich meals that incorporate vegan foods (though not strictly) into helping her feel and look her best. “When I eat a clean diet, I certainly see it in my skin immediately—the more nutrients you take in, the more you glow inside and out.”Although for Wilde, it’s less about meeting a certain standard than it is about being your best self. She’s thoughtful about her message as a new ambassador of one of the world’s biggest cosmetic brands.“You want to take the pressure out of beauty,” she says, emphasizing that it’s instead about giving women options. “Make it more about self-expression than it is about the pressure to look a certain way.”
